


The Heart of the Father Lives in the Son

by Welfycat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hostage Situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 12:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welfycat/pseuds/Welfycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To say he'd been waiting for something like this to happen would be a lie, but Sheriff Stilinski had been waiting for <i>something</i> to bring everything that had happened over the last few months to a head. He just didn't expect to have to be chained up in his own basement in order to have a truthful conversation with his son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart of the Father Lives in the Son

**Author's Note:**

> Content Notes: Canon typical violence, unlawful imprisonment, adult character frisking underaged character while character is in his underwear.  
> Author Notes: This fic takes place shortly after the end of season two. Thanks so much to my beta emeraldsnakes for her support and encouragement.

When he first woke up he thought the outline hesitating in his bedroom doorway was Stiles, even though it had been years since Stiles had last crawled into bed with him after a nightmare or a panic attack. He pushed himself up on one elbow, searching for a way to ask what was wrong without invoking Stiles' need to promise that everything was fine, and he guessed that he'd barely been asleep for three hours. There were times, many times, that he thought he was getting too old to be both a parent and the town's Sheriff. And then he noticed the silhouette of a gun in the man's hands, illuminated by the light of the nearly full moon pouring into his bedroom window and it became heart-stoppingly clear that the shadowy figure was not Stiles.

"Don't speak. Just get up. Slowly," the man said, the gun pointed directly at the Sheriff and his aim unwavering.

As the Sheriff swung his feet out of bed, thinking of his own gun tucked away in the safe in his office, his mind unwillingly flashed to the last time a gun had been pointed at him - Matt's hands trembling and angry tears streaking down his face. He remembered the echo of a gunshot and thrashing helplessly because he didn't know if that gunshot had been aimed at Stiles or Scott or had even been Matt turning the gun on himself. He stood, glad that he'd flopped onto his bed in the summer heat still in an undershirt and shorts, and sized up the man. With the gun trained so steadily, the man's strong and easy stance, the Sheriff immediately recognized that a physical confrontation was going to have to be a last resort unless he could get out of the range of the muzzle of the gun.

"Whatever you're looking for-" the Sheriff began, his words practiced and measured.

"Shut up," the man said. "Keep your hands out in front of you. Right now you're more useful to us alive but that can change real fast."

Before the Sheriff could parse what that meant he heard a shout from down the hall, Stiles' voice in a wordless cry and the crash of something falling and breaking. "Stiles!" the Sheriff shouted, stepping forward by instinct but stopping abruptly at the gun leveled at his chest. He listened carefully to the sounds of the scuffle, half considering his chances of being out of the line of fire when the man's gun went off. With the narrow hallway and the two feet of space he had been the edge of the bed and the wall, those chances weren't good.

"I'm not going to ask again: Where's your cellphone?" The man looked pointedly at the Sheriff, his finger resting on the trigger.

"On my nightstand," the Sheriff said, forcing himself to stop straining to hear what was possibly the sound of his son being kidnapped and pay attention to the situation in front of him. Getting both Stiles and himself out alive had to be his focus, he couldn't afford the what-ifs that were already swirling in his mind.

"Good, now walk toward the bedroom door. Slow steps. You look like you're making a run for it and I'll shoot you. You look like you're going to try to attack me and I'll shoot you. Getting the picture?" the man asked.

"I got it. Nice and slow and no one needs to get hurt," the Sheriff agreed. If they were taking Stiles he wanted to go too. Tactically possibly not the most sound decision, but he couldn't stand the idea of having to search for Stiles again. It had only been a few months since the opposing lacrosse team in the state championship had kidnapped Stiles and roughed him up and even those few hours had felt like his whole life had been torn from him. He couldn't do that again.

As they made their way into the hall, the Sheriff in front with the man with the gun following at enough of a distance that the Sheriff couldn't turn and take the weapon from him, he realized that all the little lights - digital clocks, the small light in the outlet in the bathroom, and the porch light that shone through the main window - were all out. It wasn't a coincidence that the power was out and the Sheriff accepted that they were dealing with people who knew what they were doing. This wasn't going to be someone he could talk down easily or scare off with the fact that he was the Sheriff.

"Dad?" Stiles asked as the Sheriff stepped onto the downstairs landing, and the Sheriff's heart dropped at the sight of his son with a knife at his throat, Stiles' eyes wide and his shoulders tight.

The Sheriff immediately looked to the man who was holding his son hostage and tried to hide the rush of fear that was somehow so much more powerful than it had been when it was just a man holding a gun at him. "I'll do whatever you want, whatever you need, just let him go. You don't need to hurt him," he promised, hating that his voice shook slightly.

The man holding Stiles gave a small huff of laughter. "Whatever. Come on, downstairs. Move. Do what we say and maybe we won't have to hurt you. Much," he said as he used his hand on Stiles' shoulder to guide Stiles in the direction of the basement.

"Can't we just stay up here?" Stiles asked, balking as much as he was able with the knife at his throat.

"Stiles, stay calm. We're going to be fine," the Sheriff instructed as soon as he heard the edge of panic in Stiles' voice. The last thing they needed was Stiles having a panic attack in the middle of all of this. The Sheriff was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to convince either of the hostage takers to go get the bottle of Stiles' pills from the bathroom cabinet.

Stiles twisted back to look at his dad and the Sheriff saw what might be the only opportunity he'd get. The man holding Stiles had let the point of the knife drift down towards the floor and the man with the gun had continued forward into the Sheriff's reach. With a quick step back and a thrust of his elbow into the man's chest, the Sheriff let his body act on years of training with his mind only along for the ride. There was a handful of seconds where they grappled for the gun and then suddenly the Sheriff was on his knees with the muzzle of the gun hard against the back of his neck. The man hadn't looked particularly muscular, none of the obvious signs of body building, but he had moved faster than the Sheriff could comprehend. Drugs, he thought as he felt the sharp pain reverberating through his knees.

He looked up at Stiles' shout of pain and stared at where Stiles nose was now pouring blood.

"Leverage works both ways," the man holding Stiles said, adjusting the blade of the knife so it was resting just below Stiles' throat. "Now, are we going downstairs or do we have to get serious?"

"Downstairs," Stiles said, his voice muffled slightly by his bloody nose.

The Sheriff waited until he felt the pressure of the gun move away from his neck before he pushed up to his feet and followed Stiles to the door in the hallway that led to the basement. He wasn't entirely sure why their hostage-takers wanted them in the basement, unless it was to keep the neighbors from hearing them scream as they were tortured, but he was getting the feeling they wanted something other than torture and murder. Or at least something along with the torture and murder. He was forced to wait until Stiles reached the basement floor before the man with the gun urged him forward and the Sheriff took one last look at the near dark outside the window as he tried to calculate how many hours it would be before someone from the Sheriff's department came looking for them. At the very least four, more likely six or seven. It was a long time, longer than he really wanted to imagine, but it was doable. They could do this.

With a gun trained at his back, the Sheriff couldn't think of anything to do but watch as the second man looped a chain around Stiles' neck, bound Stiles' hands behind his back and then padlocked the entire set of chain to one of the skeleton beams that would have been a wall if they'd ever gotten around to finishing the basement. The Sheriff offered his hands behind his back when it was his turn to be bound, his worry only increasing when they forced his wrists flat together instead of letting him brace himself to get a little wiggle room. The chain around his throat was uncomfortably tight but he could still breathe well enough, and within minutes he was down on the cold concrete floor two feet away from Stiles. The first man gathered the black duffle bag he'd been carrying the chain in and set it next to the stairs as he glanced over the rest of the basement.

"There's money, upstairs in my bedroom and in the safe in my office. Take whatever you want. I can give you the combination to the safe. There are no drugs in this house," the Sheriff started, his voice calmer now that there wasn't a knife at his son's throat.

"Well, you can take my Adderall, but if you're going to do that take my entire backpack because I've got a paper due in two days that I haven't even started yet and robbers took my homework is the best excuse ever," Stiles said, twisting his head down the best that he could to wipe the blood from his face on the sleeve of his shirt.

"Stiles," he said, hoping the warning in his voice was clear. The two men hadn't looked remotely interested in the offer of money, valuables, or even Stiles' medication, which meant they wanted something else. That probably meant that it had something to do with someone he'd helped take down, a gang member or a drug lord that he'd arrested, and that didn't bode well for them showing particular patience with Stiles' motor mouth.

It was dark in the basement, though the Sheriff's eyes had adjusted a little and a small window on the other side of the room let in enough light he could make out the shapes of things if not the details. The voices of the men didn't sound familiar to the Sheriff and what little he'd seen of them didn't ring any bells either, but it was possible this was from a case that was years old. People could hold grudges for years, waiting until the time for revenge was just right. Apparently early on a summer morning with nothing to mark one day from the next was the right time for that revenge.

The two men had stepped away, ignoring them now that they were secured, and one had a cellphone held up to his ear. The Sheriff had to strain to make out what was being said and he could see that Stiles was tilting his head in the direction of the men as well.

"-house is completely secured. It was way easier than it should have been," the man said, and then paused while he listened to whoever was on the line. "We'll check again, but you're in the clear to approach. I'd say it's a trap but there's no way they could have known we were coming."

The man on the phone listened for another minute and then pocketed his phone. "I'm doing a sweep of the perimeter. If he even looks like he's thinking about trying to escape, make him bleed," the man said, looking directly at Stiles for the last few words.

They listened in silence as the man who was evidently in charge thumped up the wooden steps and out into the main area of the house, leaving the other man, the one who had held the gun on the Sheriff, waiting at the bottom of the stairs. The man left behind sat, the gun resting in his hands, and he seemed only nominally interested in his prisoners.

The Sheriff turned to try and reassure Stiles that they'd be alright but found himself watching as Stiles struggled and twisted in the chains until he was up on his knees instead of sitting on the basement floor.

"I'm almost as tall as you, but I'm not there yet," Stiles explained, shrugging his shoulders in an attempt to adjust the chain around his neck. "Not that this is really comfortable to begin with. I'm giving them a C minus in basic hostage taking. They got the roughing us up part right, but chaining us up in the basement is a little bit serial killer cliche. They're definitely losing points for lack of originality in threats and weaponry. It doesn't even make my list of top five kidnappings."

Despite the fact that he was chained up in his basement with his son, a man with a gun sitting not far from them, the Sheriff felt the corners of his mouth twitch. Stiles' methods of dealing with stress weren't always ideal, but if Stiles could joke and fidget that meant he was handling this as well as possible. However, he didn't think the men holding them hostage would appreciate Stiles' sense of humor nearly as much. "We're going to be alright. Just try not to smart off at them too much, okay?" he asked, aiming for calm and in control.

Stiles shrugged, the chains rattling with the movement, and then he leaned to look at the basement window. "Well, if things go better than they usually do we'll be fine in just a bit. However, my mouth is kind of stuck on a single station; all Stiles, all the time."

"I know," the Sheriff said, a little ruefully. It hadn't always been that way, Stiles had been a handful even as a young child but the sharpness in his words hadn't come until later, not until it became a method of proactive protection instead of just Stiles letting his mouth run away with him. "How's your nose? Does anything else hurt?"

Stiles made a face and then winced. "Not broken, just gross. I'm in good shape otherwise. What about you? That guy took you down pretty hard. And not just like, _'hey I'm a fake pro-wrestler hard'_ but like really taking you down."

The Sheriff's knees throbbed but he was sure nothing was broken and he had a pretty good idea that his back was going to be black and blue and the muscles in his shoulders and arms were going to hurt like hell when he was released. "I'm alright. Though that guy could probably go pro if he wanted to make a career of it," he joked, keeping the conversation as light as possible while he joined Stiles in looking around their immediate surroundings for a way out or a way to defend themselves.

Stiles sighed and shifted his weight, his gaze going from the man half watching them to the window and then back again. The basement was cold, even in the mid-summer, and with both of them in thin clothing and bare feet they were going to be seriously uncomfortable before long.

"Should just be a few hours before the sun's up," the Sheriff said quietly, hoping to bolster Stiles' spirits.

"And then they'll have to go into their coffins like all good vampires?" Stiles asked, joking but then looked oddly concerned.

"When someone from the department can't reach me by my cell phone or on the home line they'll send a deputy by," he said, eyeing the man by the stairs for a moment. He had moved awfully fast but even if he was allowing for the existence of vampires - and after some of the things that had happened in Beacon Hills in the past six months he nearly thought he ought to at least consider the possibility - the man didn't seem pale or even particularly blood thirsty. No fangs that he'd seen, though the man hadn't seen fit to show off his undoubtably winning smile just yet.

Stiles shrugged and twisted against his chains again. "Unless they decide to be nice and let you sleep in."

"They better not," the Sheriff muttered. He hadn't slept through the start of his shift since he'd been a deputy himself and he certainly hoped that his staff knew that would be out of character for him and come investigate as soon as they weren't able to reach him by phone.

Footsteps on the wooden stairs drew the Sheriff's attention and he squared his shoulders the best he could as he wavered between trying to seem harmless and aiming for authoritative. He wanted whichever would get them both out alive and with the least amount of damage, but he didn't know if appearing like he'd break easy would just lead to a quicker death. He settled for as calm and in control as a person could be with their hands behind their back and a chain looped around their throat and watched as the first man returned along with someone entirely new. The Sheriff's eyes had adjusted enough to the dim light now that he could make out the features on the man's face a little better, but he still didn't see anything that he recognized. Either this was a very old case or these people had never been actively involved in a trial and a conviction in Beacon Hills.

The newcomer looked over both of them, his eyes lingering on the chains around their necks, and then nodded at Stiles. "Search him," he ordered, his voice gravely and almost weak.

The two men stepped forward to Stiles immediately, roughly yanking him to his feet.

"Hey! Hey!" the Sheriff shouted, struggling against his own chains now as he attempted to get closer, but there was nothing he could do but watch as the men briskly pulled at Stiles' shirt and boxer shorts before releasing him and pushing him back to the ground.

"Seriously? It's not like I even have pockets!" Stiles said from the floor as he struggled back to his knees. The waistband of his boxer shorts had slipped down over one of Stiles' hipbones and the collar to his shirt was torn, but for the most part Stiles was still appropriately covered.

"Where is it?" the newcomer asked, stepping closer to Stiles until he was almost within reach for Stiles to kick out at him.

Stiles shook his head, the blood smeared around his nose and mouth along with the chain around his neck and his torn shirt making him appear young and utterly defenseless. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said, just a little too quickly.

The Sheriff quickly reassessed his assumptions regarding the invasion of their home, trying to work out what it could possibly be that these men would want from Stiles; what they could possibly want badly enough that they would break into the home of the Sheriff of Beacon Hills. Over the past few months, with Stiles increasingly bizarre and troubling behavior, the Sheriff had wondered about drugs or gangs or even just getting caught up with the wrong type of kids at school. For a little while he had been very tempted to have Stiles pee in a cup, just to check, and he had 'borrowed' one of the drug dogs from the department to have a quick sniff around Stiles' bedroom. Apart from discovering where most of the bowls and cups in the house had migrated to, he'd come up empty. Now though, those suspicions were back in full force.

"Simon," the man said, holding out his hand. The man with the gun handed over his weapon immediately and they all watched in silence as the older man made a show of making sure the gun's safety was off and then pointing it directly at the Sheriff. "Let's try that again, shall we? Where is it?"

The Sheriff had gone very still even though he could feel his heart pounding away in his chest. The man's eyes had never wavered from Stiles even though it was the Sheriff he was pointing the weapon at. It didn't take any more than that for the Sheriff to realize that whatever he was involved with here, he was a bit player and Stiles was the one they wanted.

"Alright, yes, I know what you're looking for," Stiles said, falling forward against the chain around his neck and sputtering for a few seconds before he regained his balance. "But I don't have it. If I did, I'd give it to you."

The man cocked the gun, the click of the hammer being pulled back loud in the nearly empty space surrounding them. "I really don't want to have to kill the Sheriff. That's a lot of clean up for something that should be a lot simpler than this. But I will do it if you make me. They wouldn't give it to anyone but you, certainly not to the girl Hunter, so where is it?"

"I don't have it," Stiles said again, his chin up as he stared directly at the man. "They didn't give it to me, so I don't have it. Clearly I'm not as important as you think I am."

"I think you are far more important than you realize," the man said as he lowered the gun. "Search the house, top to bottom. When we find it, we'll kill the Sheriff and when we're done with the boy, we'll kill him too. Murder-suicide will do nicely."

The two men left quickly up the basement stairs and the Sheriff found that he could breathe again now that there wasn't a gun being pointed in his face. The older man, the one issuing the ultimatums, walked away from both of them and started examining the small pile of furniture that was being stored in the northeast corner of the basement.

"Stiles," the Sheriff said, pitching his voice soft in hopes that the man wouldn't hear them talking from across the large space.

"Yeah, dad?" Stiles asked as he tipped his head back against the wall and let his shoulders slump, leaving him in an uncomfortably arched position that was probably impossible for anyone except a teenager or a gymnast.

"Are you alright?" he asked, unable to tell if the tremors shaking Stiles' body were from shock, fear, or just the cold of the basement. Probably a combination of all three, as the Sheriff could feel his own hands shaking just a little.

Stiles sighed. "Gonna have a long talk about people making assumptions that they shouldn't, but yeah; so far, so good. They won't find it, because it's not here. And they won't kill us until they have it."

The Sheriff didn't point out that it was apparently only Stiles that they needed alive once they had whatever it was that they wanted, Stiles was undoubtably just as aware of that as he was. "Stiles," he said, his voice barely audible now. "What is it that they want?"

Stiles turned his head and licked his lips, leaving a sliver of pink where his upper lip had been stained with blood. "You wouldn't believe me, even if I told you," he said after a long moment.

"Right now I'd believe you if you told me it was Satan's pink tutu," the Sheriff said, clenching his jaw briefly to keep the sudden rush of anger in check. "Just tell me so I can help."

"Satan's pink tutu?" Stiles repeated, his mouth open in the way that meant Stiles was vividly imagining something.

"Stiles," he hissed, running out of patience even if that tangent was partially his own fault.

"Yeah, fine," Stiles said as he glanced over to where the man was now digging through a cabinet full of old knickknacks the Sheriff hadn't managed to part with just yet. "It's an amulet, an heirloom really, that has the power to bring people back from the dead."

Since the Sheriff hadn't settled on what he'd been expecting - though drugs or weapons were at the top of his list - that didn't faze him as much as it probably should have. Maybe later when he wasn't chained up in the basement he would have more difficulty accepting that as fact. "And why exactly would you have an amulet that brings people back from the dead?" he asked, deciding that was the most pertinent question for the moment.

"That's just it, I wouldn't!" Stiles protested, glaring in the direction of the man still searching through their storage.

The Sheriff raised an eyebrow, a move so practiced that it felt natural even in their current circumstances. "Fine. Why would they think that you would have an amulet that raises the dead? Is this some sort of cult thing?"

"You have no idea how much I wish this was some stupid cult thing," Stiles said with a sigh. "So. A lot of things have been going on and I may not have been entirely truthful with you about some of those things..."

"I'm aware," he said dryly. "The amulet?"

"Belonged to the Hale family," Stiles said, and then added. "Yes, as in _that_ Derek Hale. But Peter Hale, Derek's formerly-comatose and formerly-dead uncle, used it to help him return from beyond the grave. So now the amulet is mostly just a hunk of metal with a bit of residual magic and some sentimental value."

The Sheriff nodded, jolting slightly when the chain around his neck brought him up short. He had overseen the case with Peter Hale's disappearance and the nurse from the long-term care center showing up dead in the trunk of her own car. Apparently, if Stiles was to believed, Peter Hale had been quite a busy man. "Then why aren't they asking the Hales for the amulet?" he asked, trying to set aside all the categories he had in his mind for possible and impossible.

Stiles sighed again. "Because the magic in the amulet, even just the bit that's left, interferes with a werewolves' control, so traditionally a human in the pack takes possession of certain magical artifacts."

_'Werewolves'_ the Sheriff mouthed silently to himself and he let his mind click over the past half year while applying werewolves to the crime scenes and murders that had torn apart his town. It made an unfortunate amount of sense and either there were a lot of things that he needed to be brought up to speed on or Stiles needed to be back in therapy. "Okay," is what he said finally, his attention drawn across the room where the man had finished going through the last of the boxes.

"Okay?" Stiles asked, nearly falling against his chains again as his body moved instinctively closer.

"We're going to have a hell of a talk later, but okay," the Sheriff agreed. "So if you don't have it, and the Hales don't have it, where is this amulet now?"

Stiles looked back to the man again. The man seemingly hadn't been paying them any attention, but that certainly didn't mean he couldn't have been listening. "Peter gave it to someone else. Someone who earned it. I mean, she used a taser on him when he gave it to her, but as far as I know she still has it," Stiles said, twisting his wrists against the chains and leaning against the cement wall.

The Sheriff nodded, thinking of the high school kids that he'd seen Stiles running around with and knowing full well they couldn't send the men to invade someone else's home. It wouldn't be long now before the men realized that Stiles didn't have the amulet, but that Stiles knew where it was. The trick was going to be convincing the men to take both of them along for the ride, and then escaping or getting help while they were being moved. He tried to ignore the fact that he had no plan for how he was going to get the men to keep him alive when they really only needed Stiles.

Footsteps on the staircase signaled the return of the other two men and Stiles leaned toward his dad as much as the chains would allow. "Look, I've got a plan. Just play along," Stiles said, and even in the dark he looked absolutely solemn and determined.

Stiles' plans tended to range from wildly unpractical to downright dangerous but the Sheriff nodded because he knew when to cede control to someone who had more knowledge in certain situations. Right now Stiles had the most information about whatever mess that had somehow invaded their lives and he would have to trust that his son's plan would at least move them in the direction of escape.

"No luck?" Stiles asked before any of the men could consult each other, but it was clear that none of them had found the amulet. "See, this is why people should listen to me. It saves a lot of time in the long run, and more importantly it saves me a lot of time being tied up in basements. That's getting old really fast."

The older man, the one who had arrived last and had been going through their stuff in the basement, glanced at the other two men and clearly saw that neither had returned with the amulet. He walked back to Stiles, his sweeping gaze taking in the Sheriff before dismissing him. "If you don't have it, I guess that means you're not of any use to us. Is there anything you want to tell me that might change that assessment?" he asked, not needing to even touch the gun resting in the waistband of his pants to make the threat clear.

"Look, if you're willing to break into the Sheriff's house to get a magic amulet, then clearly you don't have a lot of time. Most necromancy isn't meant to be permanent and you're running out of time before you're occupying a corpse, I get it. So listen to me when I tell you that the amulet isn't going to help you. There's isn't enough mojo left in that thing to bring back a dead duck. You're wasting your time," Stiles said.

The Sheriff took a moment to be impressed with his son, his son who had been growing up before him and somewhere along the way had become adult enough to speak rationally and calmly with people who were dangerous. Over the past five or six years Stiles had increasingly showed interest in his father's work, and moreover, and aptitude for looking at cases and finding connections that other people missed. He'd done his best to keep the more violent cases away from his son's eyes and had encouraged Stiles to explore other career options as well because he'd been concerned that even though Stiles was good at unraveling possibilities and leads, Stiles' people skills were a little hit or miss. Seeing Stiles now, even with the skin around his mouth stained with dried blood and a chain around his neck, he could picture Stiles as being an excellent deputy someday in the near future. 

"The Hale family renascentia amulet is the only talisman we've been able to locate that would have enough power," one of the men said as he stepped forward. "You're lying."

"Once again, I'm not." Stiles said, a hint of impatience creeping into his voice.

"Perhaps not," the older man allowed. "But I would see this for myself. My time is limited, as you deduced, but not so limited that I would abandon pursuit of a solid lead on your word alone. This is your last chance to tell me where it is before we start on less pleasant methods of finding what we need to know. Where is the amulet?"

Stiles glanced over and the Sheriff was certain there was a brief question in his gaze before he turned back to the men. "I don't know where it is," Stiles said, holding his head high even though he was obviously expecting to be hit for the response.

"Take him," the man said, nodding in the Sheriff's direction.

There wasn't much the Sheriff could do except adjust his legs so he would be ready to move as the two younger men came forward to unchain him from the wooden support beam. They left his hands locked behind his back and the loop of the chain around his throat, but the Sheriff lunged as soon as he knew he had the space to maneuver. The first man went down easily enough but as soon as the second laid his hands on the Sheriff's chest it was slowly and painfully imploding. He couldn't draw a breath and was only vaguely aware that he was sinking down to the concrete floor and that someone was screaming - and that the someone screaming was him. The sudden absence of pain was almost as stunning as its sudden presence had been and he stared up at the ceiling panting for breath.

"Stop!" Stiles had been shouting too, but now the Sheriff could understand his son's words. "Stop! I'll take you to the amulet, just stop!"

Stiles sounded utterly broken and terrified and the Sheriff thought of all the times he'd put his arm around Stiles' shoulders and tried to reassure him that despite the dangers of his job that they'd be alright. Right now, with his arms bunched painfully behind his back and his heart still trying to find its rhythm, he wondered if Stiles hadn't been right to be afraid that this would happen again - that again Stiles would be forced to watch another parent slowly and painfully die.

"Please," Stiles said, and there were tears now. The Sheriff could tell without looking that Stiles was trying to ignore the tears, that he'd be quickly brushing them away before anyone could notice if he had use of his hands. "Anything, just leave him out of this. You want me, not him."

The Sheriff had just enough energy left in his body to roll his head to the side in order to see Stiles. The younger man, the one that had so easily incapacitated the Sheriff, had moved to release Stiles from where he was attached to the wooden beam, and Stiles took a few unsteady steps as he was led by the tail of the chain around his neck. He saw what Stiles was about to do before anyone else but all he could get out was a rattling wheeze when he tried to form the word 'no'. Stiles went for the knife in the man's belt, twisting his body so that he could get his bound hands on the hilt.

The man turned as Stiles' hand latched onto the hilt of the knife and the Sheriff watched as every heartbeat pounded like bone-rattling thunder. Once again he was immobilized and powerless to protect his son and he liked this feeling even less than not knowing where Stiles was or if he was okay. In his mind's eye he could see the next thirty seconds play out - Stiles' hand shoved away, Stiles gasping as the knife was thrust into his chest, Stiles motionless on the floor as a pool of blood seeped out from underneath him. And there was nothing he could do except watch.

The Sheriff heard Stiles cry out seconds before it felt like a bomb had gone off right next to him. Even with his eyes pressed closed, the sudden flood of light was blinding and some force he couldn't identify sent him sliding several feet across the concrete floor. He landed roughly on his side, the pressure now off his hands and wrists at least, and even as he was blinking at the afterimages he couldn't quite make sense of what had just happened. "Stiles?" he asked, though the sound that came out barely formed his son's name. "Stiles?"

He must have made more sense that time, or at least made enough noise, because there was a clatter of chain and then Stiles was kneeling next to him. "Dad?" Stiles asked, his voice suddenly young.

"Stiles," he said, his relief at seeing and hearing his son beyond what he could process without being completely overwhelmed. "The men?" he asked, because he had to know if they were still in danger before he could do anything else. Certain lessons could never be unlearned.

Stiles looked across the room and then back down at his dad. "Unconscious, I think. And the dead one is vaporized. I think the other two are alive, but I didn't check." He looked down at where his hand was steadily dripping blood onto the concrete floor. "But it worked. It worked just like the book said. Well, pretty much. The book was in a weird latin dialect, so the translation was a little rough."

The Sheriff felt his eyebrows raise in automatic response and something deep inside relaxed; Stiles was still Stiles, and he was still Stiles' father. Even magic and amulets and werewolves couldn't change that. "That was your plan?" he asked, his voice still a little rough but much better than it had been moments earlier.

Stiles' mouth dropped into a guilty frown. "I didn't think they'd take you. They were supposed to take me, and then as soon as I spilled blood on the protective wards the wards would have done, well, what they did. They weren't supposed to take you. I'm sorry."

"Stiles. You did good," the Sheriff said. He tugged against the chains binding his wrists, wanting to reach for his son. "You did good. Now, let's try to get back to our feet so we're up before they are. Can you help me sit up?"

"Yeah. I'll do that and then I'll check on them," Stiles said as he used his uninjured hand to reach for his dad. "The wards disintegrated some of the chains but you were far enough from the radius that it just moved you out of the way. I think we have bolt cutters in the garage somewhere, right?"

The Sheriff used Stiles' help to roll up so that he was sitting and leaning forward toward his legs. Now that he was up he could see a little better. There was a glowing circle on the floor, probably a dozen feet in diameter, with the perimeter marked in symbols that he didn't recognize. In the circle there was a small pile of ash that was probably the already-dead man that had been the leader of the group, but Stiles' blood trail didn't start until a few inches away from the outer line.

"Yeah, I may have done a little bit of redecorating around the house," Stiles said as he pulled the remnants of the chain off from around his neck. "Hope you don't mind."

"As long as the neighbors don't see," the Sheriff responded. He had seen Stiles running around the house over the last weekend of Spring Break but hadn't noticed any discernible difference in the house itself and had assumed it was a project for Stiles' art credit and left it at that. Apparently there had been something far more involved than an art project going on and he had to wonder how much of Stiles' recent behavior that he'd dismissed as Stiles being a little odd, or even the behavior he'd worried over, was because of magic and werewolves.

He was starting to consider some of the implications of what he'd learned now that he wasn't numb from shock and pain and it immediately became evident that he'd essentially entered a whole new world - a world he knew almost nothing about. Over the course of his career he'd learned that the lack of information was one of the most dangerous things; entire lives and families were destroyed, decisions were made that changed the course of history and not for the better. Only yesterday under the same circumstances he would have been telling Stiles to call 911 and get deputies and emergency personnel over to the house as a priority one call. Now, with a glowing circle on the floor and a pile of ash where a walking dead man used to be, he needed to at least do some clean up before he could call anyone in. "Can you check and see if they're still alive? If they are, there are some long cable ties in my office that we should use to secure them for now," he instructed, feeling a little bit ashamed that he wasn't sending Stiles first to look for the bolt cutters.

"I can do that," Stiles said, visibly steeling himself. Before he could step away from the Sheriff, the basement door opened with a loud crash and seconds later people were thundering down the wooden steps.

"Stiles!" someone called, and the Sheriff managed to take a steadying breath as he realized he recognized Scott's voice.

Stiles looked up from where his violent recoil at the noise had sent him to the ground. "Really? Are you shitting me right now?"

"We didn't get your message until like three minutes ago," Scott said, looking a little sheepish in the glow of the light from the protective wards. At least, the Sheriff thought that was what sheepish looked like on someone who had a lot more hair, glowing yellow eyes, and fangs.

It took him a moment to identify the other two men with Scott as Derek Hale and Isaac Lahey, both with the extra hair, glowing eyes, fangs, and claws at their fingertips. "Werewolves," he said, not quite a question and not quite a statement either.

Stiles sighed audibly as he got back to his feet. "What's the point of having an SOS message that I can send if none of you check your fucking phones?" he asked, suddenly seeming to remember that his dad was only a few feet away with a grimace.

"We were out in the woods. Phones don't exactly travel well when we're running," Derek Hale said shortly as he took everything in and moved to where one of the men was sprawled on the floor. "Just the two of them?"

"And the pile of ash," Stiles said irritably as he cradled his hand against his shirt.

"I'm gonna get you loose, okay Sheriff Stilinski?" Scott said as he knelt down next to the Sheriff, his fangs and claws still out.

The Sheriff blinked a couple of times and then nodded. "That would be great, Scott." He felt a tug on the chains and then suddenly Scott was unwinding them from around his wrists and a minute later from around his neck. The Sheriff immediately touched his wrists, the chains had left imprints in his skin but nothing that would cause permanent damage, and then he brought his hands up to his neck just to be able to feel the skin there, whole and unbroken.

Scott had wandered over to Stiles and was checking the cut on his hand while Derek and Isaac were moving the men over to the edge of the basement and binding their wrists with chain from the bag the men had brought with them. They had all reverted to completely human, only the red flash of Derek's eyes an indication that they weren't just any group of young men.

"Werewolves," the Sheriff said to himself again as he managed to get to his feet. He wasn't as young as he once was and he knew that he wasn't yet feeling the injuries from being pushed across the room, to say nothing of whatever the man had done to him with, well, magic.

"Let's get the power back on and go upstairs. It's almost morning," Stiles said as he looked at the far window. There was just a glimmer of light visible as the light from the protective wards began to fade. "Could be worse, I guess. Could be a school day."

Scott and Isaac both groaned. "Some of us have to be at summer classes in two hours," Scott said with a look that was now practically literally puppy dog eyes.

The Sheriff carefully shook his head, decided that the two men were fine where they were being restrained for now, and inched his way toward the stairs. Everything could wait for an hour or two while he and Stiles got put back together and then he had a very long couple of weeks ahead of him while he sorted out what he needed to know about this new world that had fallen into his life. He glanced back: the werewolves masquerading as humans, the slowly dying glow of the protective wards, and the pile of ash that had once been a man all not fading the way a nightmare should. Maybe he'd better make that few weeks a few months instead.


End file.
